John Wesley began 1740 quietly, in stillness and reflection in London. He soon travelled to Oxford. He still had obligations at Lincoln College. During the trip, he found a set of letters that he had received since he had first talked about going into ministry in 1725. He read them over during a two day stretch. What he found there surprised him. He writes about “how few traces of inward religion are” there.1 There is only one person he finds who comes close to this understanding of faith. Richard Heitzenrater, in his notes, speculates that this could be William Smith, a fellow of Lincoln College who had faced hostility at Oxford. John writes about him that “he was expelled out of his society as a madman, and being disowned by his friends and despised and forsaken of all men, lived obscure and unknown for a few months, and then went to him whom his soul loved.”2
This is a period of reflection over the past, but in his present, John is going through a deep spiritual struggle. Fetter Lane has come under the influence of someone whose account of faith radically differs from his own. John’s older brother, Samuel, passed away suddenly at a young age a little over a month before. In a few years, John has lost his father and older brother, the two most important male figures in his life. His mother is also nearing her 70s and much less of a force in his life. As well, there are continually challenges from leaders in the Church of England, not to mention his other revivalists like Ralph Erskine and George Whitefield whose doctrinal loyalties clash with John’s.
We don’t have John’s personal diary from this time. As I mentioned in Episode 62 on Samuel Wesley, Jr., the portion of the diary covering the period before Samuel’s death up through April 13, 1740, is lost. There is no need to read into its absence, but we should understand that John sees himself in the persecuted correspondent he found who spoke of inward religion against the tide. John understands his own position as controversial, even if he has seen great fruit in Bristol, London, and elsewhere.
On January 7, John left London for Bristol. He preached at Kingswood and led prayers at the New Room. The rest of the month, he stayed in the Bristol area, preaching and teaching and raising funds for the poor. This seems to be a relatively new aspect of the ministry in Bristol because he doesn’t go into such detail at an earlier date.
After one of his sermons, John made a collection on January 21 for those “who having no work (because of the severe frost) and no assistance from the parish wherein they lived, were reduced to the last extremity…we were enabled to feed a hundred, sometimes a hundred and fifty a day, of those whom we found to need it the most.”3
During this time, John also gives his own evidence for answered prayer among the participants of his prayer meetings and preaching sessions. He writes:
“I was strongly convinced that if we asked of God, he would give light to all those that were in darkness. About noon we had proof of it; one that was weary and heavy laden, upon prayer made for her, soon finding rest to her soul. In the afternoon we had a second proof; another mourner being speedily comforted.”4
At the end of January, John leaves for London to visit a man at Newgate prison who had come to the revival earlier. He arrives by February 6 and after a visit, John is challenged by the ordinary of Newgate, that is, the chaplain of the prison. The Ordinary told john that “he was sorry I should turn Dissenter from the Church of England.”5 This led to John to give a healthy account of what he understood Dissent to be at the time.
Our twentieth Article defines a true church, " a congregation of faithful people, wherein the true word of God is preached, and the sacraments duly administered." According to this account, the Church of England is that body of faithful people, (or holy believers,) in England, among whom the pure word of God is preached, and the sacraments duly administered. Who then are the worst Dissenters from this Church? 1. Unholy men of all kinds; swearers, Sabbath breakers, drunkards, fighters, whoremongers, liars, revilers, evil speakers ; the passionate, the gay, the lovers of money, the lovers of dress, or of praise, the lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God: all these are Dissenters of the highest sort, continually striking at the root of the Church ; and themselves belonging in truth to no Church, but to the synagogue of Satan. 2. Men unsound in the faith ; those who deny the Scriptures of truth ; those who deny the Lord that bought them ; those who deny justification by faith alone, or the present salvation which is by faith ; these also are Dissenters of a very high kind : for they likewise strike at the foundation ; and were their principles universally to obtain, there could be no true Church upon earth : Lastly, those who unduly administer the sacraments; who (to instance but in one point) administer the Lord's Supper to such as have neither the power nor the form of godliness. These, too, are gross Dissenters from the Church of England, and should not cast the first stone at others.6
It was actually Article 19, as Heitzenrater points out, but the argument still stands. John is ecumenical in how he understands his calling and focused more on conversion and holiness than denominational loyalty avant la lettre. His ecumenism did not lead to peace with the Moravians in London nor at Fetter Lane.
At the end of the month, John writes:
I had a long conference with those whom I esteem very highly in love. But I could not yet understand them on one point,—Christian openness and plainness of speech. They pleaded for such a reservedness and closeness of conversation as I could in no wise reconcile with St. Paul's direction, "By manifestation of the truth" to' commend " ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God." Yet I scarce knew what to think, considering they had the practice of their whole Church on their side : till I opened my Testament on these words, " What is that to thee? Follow thou me.”7
John soon left London and was back in Bristol on March 5. Over and over, during the season, John experiences a spiritual heaviness whenever he travels to London and a spiritual lightness upon returning to Bristol. John even reflects on the matter. He writes:
It was easy to observe here, in how different a manner God works now, from what he did last spring. He then poured along like a rapid flood, overwhelming all before him. Whereas now.
He deigns his influence to infuse,
Secret, refreshing as the silent dews.
Convictions sink deeper and deeper. Love and joy are more calm,
even, and steady. And God, in many, is laying the axe to the root of
the tree, who can have no rest in their spirits till they are fully renewed
in the image of God, in righteousness and true holiness.8
By the middle of the month, though, John is notified that he will soon be prosecuted “for holding a seditious conventicle.”9 The conventicle laws have come up in this history, starting with Susanna Wesley being accused of hosting a conventicle when she led a bible study while her husband was away. Basically any unsanctioned gathering of more than a few people could be seen as sedition and plotting against the crown.
John had been accused of sedition before, but the cloud did not go away. We are still five years away from the Jacobite rising of 1740 and the high water mark of the Stuart claim to the throne with Bonnie Prince Charlie. Until the final defeat of the Jacobites, suspicion will follow Wesley and the Methodists.
Before the court session will be held on April 2, on April 1, a riot breaks out while John is preaching on Acts 23, when Paul argues with the Sanhedrin. The mayor eventually sent in the chief constable and others to calm the rioters, and they take up all of the court’s time so John Wesley is off the hook for charges of sedition.
John still keeps up with the goings on in London thanks to his correspondence with James Hutton. This was not a deeply prolific letter writing season, but a few letters remain from the period, including one where John defends the actions of a man named Edward Nowers, who was rejected by both George Whitefield and the Moravians, but in whom John finds “to be full of love and Christ and the Holy Ghost.”10
John also receives a letter from Whitefield at this time which shows them still in close connection but with the theological cord that binds them fraying at the ends. Whitefield writes:
The doctrine of election, and the final perseverence of those that are truly in Christ, I am ten thousand times more convinced of, if possible, than when I saw you last…You think otherwise. Why then should we dispute, when there is no probability of convincing? Will it not in the end destroy brotherly love, and insensibly take from us that cordial union and sweetness of soul, which I pray God may always subsist between us?11
After Easter, John returns to Wales and he feels much more encouraged on this second trip. The Welsh Revival predated Wesley, but he participated in it and shared in the bounty.
When he returns to Bristol on April 12, John’s Diary starts up again with the same pattern it had had before. The Journal and Diary are moving precipitously closer to the great division at Fetter Lane and John’s complete break with the Moravians.
The diary for April 30 mentions a word never written in the journal up to this point, but one that will have an outsized importance on the Methodist movement: Foundery. We will get there in time, but the reason the Foundery became central to the movement is partially because Fetter Lane would no longer be a spiritual home for John and Charles in London. What was the final straw that broke the union of that great society, and what would John do in the aftermath? Next time on the History of Methodism.